Summer hanging on here in Philly. The first piece is a lovely way to remember 9/11. 2 stories related to cancer/clinical trials also highlights. And what's coming in the fall movie season, good/bad/otherwise...

A science-storyteller like the late, great, sorely missed Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933–August 30, 2015) comes about once a century, if we're lucky. Throughout his long career as a working scientist who bewitched the popular imagination with…

Jeff CohnYesterday was 9/11 and I found this article quite moving. For me, nothing touches me like music does, in ways that are hard to define yet are powerful and consistent.

Like many people starting out in the biotech industry, I wanted to make an impact on people's lives by developing life-changing therapies. But I've become disappointed by what I believe are too many companies pushing mediocre and me-too drugs, also…

Jeff CohnI agree wholeheartedly with this perspective. Patients/families are looking for breakthroughs, not incrementalism

In recent years, health officials have pushed aggressively to include more women in clinical trials of new drugs. Gone is the ban that once excluded women of childbearing age from participating in studies. Even scientists who work with animals are…

Jeff CohnI think that breast cancer in men may be a very different disease than breast cancer in women- adding men to a trial including women makes less sense to me than treating it as the rare disease it is, and developing strategies like for other rare illnesses

A longtime city educator has mesothelioma — a type of cancer most often caused by asbestos exposure — and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers officials said Wednesday they are investigating a potential cancer cluster linked to…

Jeff CohnWhen old enough 2 of my grandkids might attend one of the schools mentioned here- going to urban public schools is 'risky' enough without adding serious health risks due to toxic buildings...

Getting less than six hours of sleep a night, or more than nine hours, might increase the risk for heart attack. Previous observational studies have found an association between sleep duration and heart attack. But for the current study…

Jeff CohnRarely the case but I prefer the comments to the article itself here...more science and more practical information

Audio will be available later today. The next generation of doctors will start their careers at a time when physicians are feeling pressure to limit prescriptions for opioid painkillers. Yet every day, they'll face patients who are hurting from…

Jeff Cohn'The takeaway message that I distinctly remember leaving with was that pain management is extremely complicated,' Wang says. 'It's not just, give this medication and they'll feel better.' Thanks to friend Adele Dujardin for sending the link

The day they found Lee Odgers, it was so hot that the wax candles inside her Northeast Philadelphia apartment had started to melt. The 87-year-old woman had been dead for hours, too long for investigators to get an accurate reading of her body…

Jeff CohnSafe housing for the poor is an issue most of us don't think about. Why should anyone die from the heat? Mostly this is about lack of societal will to do something that would prevent most of these deaths...

There's a stereotype about people seeking happiness—that all they care about is themselves. They look at the world through rose-colored glasses, and so they refuse to see suffering. If we want to motivate people to care about righting social…

Jeff CohnCoaching is about living life according to your own values/priorities and reaching goals. This experience is aligned with the findings of this paper- that happy (or satisfied?) people are more apt to DO something about issues they care about than others..

The Sugerman family's trip to Southern Utah this past May involved a treacherous drive. There were hairpin turns; the three adult children needed to move boulders to clear a path for the car. “We were on these roads which were barely roads…

Jeff CohnThe first half of this is about traveling together, a good idea that is also expensive. Stick with it to the 2nd half for more broadly useful ideas

Louis Lumière supposedly said that the “cinema is an invention without a future.” If you read recent headlines from Hollywood and beyond, you might agree, even though Lumière, one of the pioneers of the medium, made his…

Jeff CohnI went to the movies for the first time in months last week (saw 'Peanut Butter Falcon,' really liked it) and was reminded how much fun it was to see a movie in a theater. If you feel like I do you'll appreciate this article